Search the Collection

Sitter associated with 9 portraitsWriter and traveller. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the daughter of the Duke of Kingston. She secretly married Edward Wortley Montagu in 1712 and accompanied him on his mission to Constantinople as ambassador in 1716. A victim of smallpox which left her badly marked, she had her son inoculated against the disease at the age of four in Turkey, probably shortly after this portrait was painted, and introduced the practice to England on her return home in 1718. A literary bluestocking and leader of society in London but left England and her husband in 1739 to live abroad, only returning to England shortly before her death. Her celebrated Letters, written from abroad, were published posthumously.